Bear number four, step up and growl…

Here’s something you don’t find every day. My Washington Post tells me a guy drove his car off a road and into a canal here in the nation’s capital. The man, who was charged with driving under the influence, told police he had seen a bear.

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Mr. Johnson, we’re gonna have to ask you some questions. It’s just routine.

But Offisher, I’m cold and wet and I’ve had a few…

Now, Mr. Johnson, you say you saw a bear and then you drove into the canal. Can you describe it?

Um, it was big, and real scary.

I see. Was it all white? We get some polar bears in the woods around here this time of year.

I don’t think so.

Did you notice if it was wearing a drill instructor’s hat and standing on two legs? Sometimes Smokey the Bear comes to the U.S. Forest Service headquarters here and gets up to no good…

No, no hat. It was more like he was wearing a black and white tuxedo.

A TUX! So it was one of those pesky pandas from the National Zoo! The zookeepers let ’em out at night to do their business, and they cause trouble.

You come down to the station, Mr. Johnson. I’m putting you in a room with some grizzly bears, a Kodiak, a polar bear and those pandas, for a positive ID.

You’re putting me IN THE ROOM with live bears? But I’m hammered out of my mind! Do you unnershtand? I’m totally wasted!

Well, we don’t have fancy one-way glass line-ups in DC, so we’re gonna have to…

Oh, no, no,, no…. Not old and grizzled, er I mean crusty, at all. Just mature, not easily swayed, inflexible, obstinate, insensitive, unresponsive – Drat, I knew this Thesaurus would get me in trouble one day….